This is the 40th in our daily entertainment series highlighting 55 Jamaicans who broke down barriers and helped put the country on the world stage. Each day one personality will be featured, culminating Independence Day, August 6.

Dancehall music, most students of reggae would agree, ruled the roost in Jamaica for most of the 1980s. While many artistes went the computer route, a group from Waterhouse carried the roots flag with distinction.

Black Uhuru formed in that Kingston community during the early 1970s with Duckie Simpson, Garth Dennis and Don Carlos among its original members. It was not until late that decade the group broke through with a different brand of roots-reggae.

After recording the acclaimed Love Crisis album for Lloyd “King Jammys” James in 1977, there was a lull. A change in personnel was what the doctor ordered.

Simpson was still at the helm, with fellow Waterhouse artiste Michael Rose and American Puma Jones completing what is regarded as the group’s classic line-up.

With the rising drum and bass team of Sly and Robbie as producers, Black Uhuru recorded some of the most potent songs of the 1980s and won an international audience.

In 1979 they re-defined the Waterhouse sound, thanks to Rose’s unique delivery and Sly and Robbie’s patented rhythms. They ruled Jamaican charts with a flood of hit songs including Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Plastic Smile, Abortion and General Penitentary.

That sound got bigger in the 80s when much of the trio’s songs were recorded at Compass Point studio in The Bahamas. Songs like Sponji Reggae, World Is Africa, Party in Session, Sinsemilla, Solidarity and Bull In The Pen, made Black Uhuru a force.

Bull In The Pen is from the 1984 album, Anthem, which won the first Grammy Award for Best Reggae Recording (now known as Best Reggae Album) in 1985.

Rose left the group in 1985; Jones died in 1990.

Black Uhuru soldiered on with an array of lead singers including Junior Reid and Dennis and Carlos who returned in 1989. Andrew Bees is the group’s current lead singer with Simpson, the self-proclaimed ‘four-star general’ still calling the shots.

A bitter five-year court case over ownership of the group’s name ended in Simpson’s favour in 1997. It would take more than negative headlines to overturn Black Uhuru’s legacy.